Marion's Ella Soutter serves UMass Dartmouth ahead, but UMass Boston takes Little East title in five

DARTMOUTH UMass Boston led the third set of the Little East final 23-20 on Saturday afternoon, and UMass Dartmouth took the last five points, the final four with Marion's Ella Soutter serving.

Soutter, a senior middle blocker who played at Old Rochester Regional, went back to the line after a Beacons attack error made it 23-21. Junior Olivia Seutter's kill cut the lead to one, and Soutter's ace off senior Paige Coulson tied it at 23 and sent UMass Boston coach Stacy Cheney to a second timeout of the set. A Mya Perron attack error gave the Corsairs set point, and Soutter set Olivia Seutter for the kill that won it 25-23 and put UMass Dartmouth up two sets to one.

The top-seeded Beacons answered with the last two sets, 25-22 and 15-10, and beat No. 2 UMass Dartmouth 3-2 (13-25, 25-20, 23-25, 25-22, 15-10) for the Little East Conference women's volleyball championship at the Clark Athletic Center in Boston, before a crowd of 271.

UMass Dartmouth had cut the fifth set to 12-10 when UMass Boston took the last three points. Junior middle blocker Addie Blomgren put down a kill with Soutter serving, freshman Lily Russell came off the bench to serve an ace for match point, and Blomgren ended it with another kill off a set from junior Audrey Cofield.

Taunton had a player on the floor in the final, too. Sophomore middle blocker Lea Selfridge, who played at Taunton High, came on for the Corsairs late in the fourth set with UMass Boston ahead 21-19, one of eight sets she has played this season across five matches, according to UMass Dartmouth's season statistics.

The title is UMass Boston's first in the Little East since 2021, the school said in a post after the match, and it carries the conference's automatic berth in the NCAA Division III tournament. The NCAA's Division III women's volleyball committee named the Little East in February among the conferences recommended for automatic qualification in 2026, and the conference gives that berth to its tournament champion, as it did when Plymouth State won last year's final.

Coulson, a senior from Marriottsville, Md., was named the tournament's Most Outstanding Player at the trophy presentation on the Beacons' home floor, where UMass Boston's captains and seniors were called forward to accept the championship trophy.

For UMass Dartmouth, the final ends the season, the school said in its recap, with the Corsairs at 16-8 and 7-1 in the Little East. UMass Boston, 21-8, will learn its first opponent and site when the NCAA reveals its 64-team bracket, 44 automatic qualifiers and 20 at-large teams, in a selection show at 1 p.m. Monday, Nov. 16, on NCAA.com.

Seutter, a 6-foot-2 opposite from Mesa, Ariz., put down a match-high 23 kills, hitting .291 with seven errors on 55 swings, and added an ace, three block assists and seven digs for 25.5 points, the most in the match. Senior captain Allison Pate had 20 kills and 22 digs, her most digs of the season, according to the school, and senior setter Skye Peters ran the offense with 48 assists, one short of her career high, plus a career-best 23 digs, three kills and two aces.

UMass Dartmouth outhit the Beacons .175 to .139, outkilled them 60-50 and out-dug them 121-113, and over the five sets it scored 102 points to UMass Boston's 101. The Beacons had the edge at the net, nine team blocks to seven, and led the fifth set from its first point.

How the fifth set went

Sophomore middle blocker Adele Accelus and Blomgren opened the deciding set with kills, and freshman libero Ashlee Wudi served an ace for a 3-0 lead that brought a UMass Dartmouth timeout. Kills by Pate and Seutter and Soutter's second ace of the match pulled the Corsairs within 4-3, and a block by Seutter and senior Maddie Carter later made it 5-4.

The Beacons answered with a Coulson kill, an ace by Blomgren and a Corsairs attack error for an 8-4 lead, and UMass Dartmouth coach Justin Turco called the Corsairs' second and last timeout of the set. The Corsairs kept coming, and Peters and Seutter put down back-to-back kills to cut it to 10-8 and draw Cheney's first timeout of the fifth. Perron and Pate traded kills, and after Perron struck again for a 12-9 lead, a UMass Boston service error made it 12-10 before Blomgren, Russell and Blomgren again finished it.

The first four sets

UMass Dartmouth never trailed in the first set. The Beacons got within 8-7 on a kill by freshman Kaitlyn Leberstien, and the Corsairs answered with six straight points, the last five with Peters serving, including two of her aces and a block by Soutter and Seutter, for a 14-7 lead. Freshman outside hitter Norah Schweitzer had four kills in the set and Pate five, the last two of them the final points of a 25-13 win in which UMass Dartmouth hit .316 and held UMass Boston to .025.

The second set turned on runs, and from a 3-3 tie UMass Boston scored five in a row, four of them with Leberstien serving, for an 8-3 lead, and Coulson later put down three straight kills in a five-point run that made it 15-8. The Corsairs answered with five straight points of their own, on a Pate kill, a block by Soutter and Pate, two Seutter kills and a kill by freshman defensive specialist Brooke Harrington, to get within 15-13.

UMass Boston pulled away again to 24-17 on a Blomgren kill. UMass Dartmouth saved three set points, the first on a Beacons attack error and the next two on back-to-back aces by Harrington, before a Corsairs service error ended the set 25-20.

The third set was tied 13 times and the lead changed hands six times. UMass Boston went up 16-13 on a Coulson kill and an ace by Cofield, and out of a Corsairs timeout Pate put down four straight kills, the last three with Harrington serving, for a 17-16 lead that brought a UMass Boston timeout. After ties at 17, 18 and 19, a Beacons setting error put the Corsairs up 20-19, and UMass Boston answered with kills by Blomgren, Coulson and Perron. Turco used the Corsairs' last timeout of the set down 22-20, and Blomgren's kill out of it made it 23-20 before Soutter's run turned the set around.

UMass Dartmouth led 13-10 in the fourth set on a Harrington kill and a Beacons attack error, a few points after Soutter stuffed sophomore Nevaeh Yancey for a solo block. UMass Boston then scored four straight, two of them Perron kills and one a block by Cofield and Blomgren, to go up 14-13. The Corsairs went back in front 17-15 on two Coulson attack errors, the second blocked by Carter and Seutter. The set was tied at 17, 18 and 19, the last of its 10 ties, before a Leberstien kill and a Corsairs setting error put the Beacons ahead 21-19.

A block by Pate and Carter and a solo block by Soutter on Coulson kept UMass Dartmouth within 22-21, and after a Blomgren kill, Seutter's kill made it 23-22. Blomgren answered with another kill for set point, and a Corsairs attack error ended the set 25-22 and sent the match to a fifth. Seutter had seven kills in the fourth set and Blomgren five.

Who did what

Soutter played all five sets and finished with two solo blocks, two block assists, two aces without a service error, two digs and the assist that won the third set. Her four blocks led the Corsairs, ahead of Carter and Seutter with three each, and over 24 matches this fall she had 91 kills on .315 hitting, 31 aces, 11 solo blocks and 27 block assists, according to UMass Dartmouth's season statistics.

Pate, a senior outside hitter from Sebring, Fla., added three assists and two block assists to her 20 kills, and Peters, the other senior captain, from Albuquerque, N.M., had 48 of the Corsairs' 57 assists. Harrington, a freshman from Walpole, had a match-high 30 digs, three aces and three assists. Schweitzer, a freshman from Westford who played at Westford Academy, added 10 kills and six digs, her fourth double-digit kill match of the season, according to the school.

Freshman defensive specialist Mya Matos of Lakeland, Fla., had 18 digs, sophomore Ashley Serverius of Apollo Beach, Fla., had 12, and Carter, a senior middle blocker from Beverly, had two kills and three block assists.

For UMass Boston, Perron, a senior outside hitter from Beverly, led the way with 17 kills on .286 hitting, 14 digs and three block assists. Blomgren, a junior from Riverside, Ill., had 14 kills on .333 hitting with four errors in 30 swings, plus a solo block, five block assists and an ace, and her six blocks were the most in the match.

Coulson had nine kills and a team-high 25 digs. Cofield, a junior setter from Ypsilanti, Mich., had 45 assists, 20 digs and two aces, and Wudi, a freshman from Brookfield, Ill., had 22 digs, three assists and two aces. Leberstien, a freshman setter from Wilmington, Del., added five kills and 20 digs, Accelus, a sophomore from Longmeadow, had four kills, a solo block and two block assists, and Russell, a freshman from Bourne, served two aces.

The series and the season

Cheney's Beacons beat the Corsairs both times the teams met this fall, 3-1 on Oct. 21 at the Clark Athletic Center, according to UMass Boston Athletics, and again Saturday. Both teams went 7-1 in Little East play. UMass Dartmouth had led the all-time series 28-19 coming into the final, UMass Boston's preview said.

Turco's Corsairs reached the final Thursday with a five-set semifinal win over Keene State in Dartmouth, the program's fourth straight trip to the Little East final, according to the school. UMass Dartmouth won its first conference tournament title in 2023, came into the 2025 final as the two-time defending champion and lost that match to Plymouth State, according to the Little East.

UMass Boston will learn its NCAA opponent and site at 1 p.m. Monday, and regional play follows Thursday through Saturday, Nov. 19 to 21, the NCAA said.

Label: Reported by us, from the town's posted records.